Judging Freedom - COL. Douglas Macgregor: Trump and His Oligarchs.

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

COL. Douglas Macgregor: Trump and His Oligarchs.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, February 4th, 2025. Colonel Douglas McGregor is here today. And all the many things that are happening right under our noses from Gaza to Ukraine to Iran. But first this. Markets are at an all-time high. Euphoria has set in. The economy seems unstoppable. But the last administration has buried us so deep in debt and deficits, it's going to take a lot of digging to get us out of this hole. Are you prepared? Lear Capital specializes in helping people like me and you grow and protect our wealth with gold. Did you know that during Trump's last presidency, gold rose 54% to a record high?

If that happens again, that puts gold at $4,200 an ounce in his next term. Don't wait. Do what I did. Call Lear at 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com for your free gold ownership kit and special report, $4,200 gold ahead. When you call, ask how you can also get up to $15,000 in bonus gold with a qualifying purchase. Call 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them the judge sent you. Colonel McGregor, welcome here, my dear friend. I want to go right to what will soon be happening as we are on air, and that is the meeting between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What does Netanyahu want from President Trump?

Oh, that's a great question. I think what President Netanyahu wants is a guarantee of continued delivery of all the ordnance and military equipment that he needs, whether it comes in the form of F-35 jets or missiles, rockets, anything. And I think he will certainly get that. As you know, President Trump has just announced $1 billion worth of equipment on its way to Israel. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, I think there'll be a discussion about what's happening in the region. And that's going to be difficult because President Trump is not comfortable with what's happening in Gaza. Remember, he said, I want you to get it over with. Now, you and I regard that as a rather callous remark, given that we're talking about the lives and property of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. Well, that hasn't happened, and what he's gotten is instead a truce.

And I think there'll be some discussion about pressing ahead to, quote, unquote, finish the job in Gaza, whatever that means. And then there's the second part of this. What are we going to do to help the Israelis secure their northern border now with Syria? They've moved into Syria. They want to retain territory in southern Syria. Are we going to stand by that and allow them to acquire that and keep it? And that puts us at odds potentially with

the Turks. Then the other issue is the Kurdish problem in Syria. There are large numbers of Kurds, thousands that are ready to fight against the Turks if the Turks decide to remove them. There's a lot of evidence that that's actually beginning now. Are we going to pull all our forces out or not? You'll recall that in the past, President Trump has said, I want those forces out, and then ultimately he backed down. I think that will come up again for discussion. And then, of course, there's the Iranian issue. The worst thing that could happen for Mr. Netanyahu is for President Trump to strike a quote-unquote deal with Iran that leaves Iran in a position to build a nuclear weapon. He doesn't want that. He wants absolute certainty that there is no potential capability for that at all.

That may be difficult for President Trump to deliver. Do you believe, from many of your sources, that President Trump will tell Prime Minister Netanyahu this afternoon, or will announce publicly soon, the intention of the United States to open up an embassy in Tehran? And if that is so, wouldn't that be a significant setback for Netanyahu? Well, you know, that rumor was presented to me, and several of us here at OCOC tracked that down. That appears to have originated with Brett Baer, who was in Mar-a-Lago, I guess, may have been in Washington, and overheard this mentioned, whether or not it was something that President Trump said or someone else, who knows. I would be very careful not to rush to assume that. Now, if, as you say, he emerges from the meeting and announces that,

then that would suggest that he's made it clear to Mr. Netanyahu that regardless of what Netanyahu wants, we are going to open a new chapter in our relationship with Iran. I would welcome that, as I'm sure you would, because I certainly don't want to see a war between Iran and Israel or anybody else over there. But I wouldn't bet on it yet. So Brett Baier often plays golf with President Trump, and there's a third person who plays golf with them. We'll know who this is in a heartbeat. Chris, cut number 11. So what this resolution does, it lays out the case against Iran's nuclear ambition.

Bibi and the Israelis are going to have to make a decision relatively soon what to do about the Iran nuclear program. This is not an authorization to use force. But I am here to tell you and the audience in the world that I think America should support an effort by Israel if they decide to decimate the Iranian nuclear program because I think it's a threat to mankind. Israel is strong. Iran is weak.

Hezbollah, Hamas have been decimated. They're not finished off, but they've been weakened. And there's an opportunity to hit the Iran nuclear program in a fashion I haven't seen in decades. Israel is strong, Iran is weak, Hezbollah and Hamas have been decimated. Where is he coming from? He sounds like the commander in the Crimea in 1854, urging the light brigade to charge up the hill against the Russian artillery. We know how that turned out. Wasn't a success story.

He is, in my judgment, for President Trump's purposes, the voice from hell. President Trump continues to invite him into his inner circle. He's making a very serious mistake. But I think that Lindsey Graham and Mr. Netanyahu are unambiguously on the same page. I think they both want that war desperately, and they want us to be in it. And they think that they could be successful early on with the right kinds of strikes. We've heard that sort of thing so many times in the past, going back decades. It doesn't make any difference.

Once you open the door to a war like that, it has a bad habit of running in all sorts of directions you never anticipated, which is why I and many others would prefer no war at all, Judge. Colonel, do you believe that Donald Trump is a man of peace and will not start a war, whether it's to please Netanyahu or Lindsey Graham or anybody? I think Donald Trump is someone who doesn't want a war. I've said that from the beginning. His instincts tell him wars are not good for presidents. But people can be talked into things, and he is someone who can be talked into things. It's not his forte. He's much more comfortable talking

about business and economics and so forth. He's also got all of these donors standing behind him who have poured tens of millions of dollars into his campaign to get him elected and they too want war with Iran so I think it's a very difficult position that he's in I wouldn't second guess him at this stage but I would not exclude the possibility that he falls for the argument we can do this we'll do it quickly it'll be over in two weeks or three weeks I mean that's something that uh General West Clark told Bill Clinton when he was president about the Kosovo air campaign and President Clinton said how long do you think this will last and he said well three or four days

two weeks at the most a very hazardous statement to make Wars are not predictable things right so I think you've got a similar situation here. It depends on how much trust and confidence the president has in either Netanyahu or Lindsey Graham or Mr. Waltz. His national security advisor is also an Iran war advocate. So I wouldn't be surprised. I doubt seriously that Mr. Hankseth would push back against this. He's also another Iran war advocate. ceasefire, the copies of which he has locked in his safe so the public can't see it, given how much pressure he's under to resume the war or perhaps lose his majority in the Knesset? No, I don't put any trust in the subsequent versions or phases of this thing. I think he's going to stick with the first one. It's in his interest to do so, gives his forces a break to rest, refit for the next phase.

And that's what he's going to do. He's going to rely primarily once again on the hundreds of aircraft that he's got, the Air Force to do serious damage to any number of different enemies, but he's not going to follow through on the rest of it. And I don't think anybody on the other side of these matters, whether they're in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Hezbollah, anywhere else, Syria, no one believes that. So, no, I don't think so. What did Netanyahu accomplish by his 15 months of genocide? Well, that depends on who you talk to. There are lots of Israelis who believe that he has systematically destroyed the Palestinian position and any hope of a Palestinian state. That was the goal, one of the goals. The underlying purpose, though, was to drive everybody

out of Gaza. Well, that hasn't quite worked. And Hamas is by no means destroyed any more than Hezbollah is. But he may think that he's bought more time for Israel to renew the fight and go back and finish the job, which is why he wants all of those 2,000-pound bombs and all the other munitions he can get his hands on. Finish the job. The place is totally demolished. At least 60,000 people, maybe as many as 200,000 are dead. Netanyahu wants to continue and Trump's going to finance it. Yes, that's it. Let me switch gears, Charles. Is the Biden pipeline to Kiev still flowing?

It would appear so. I've made some phone calls, talked to people, and it looks like the military equipment that was already there, ready for shipment into Ukraine, is being moved into Ukraine. So whatever suspension of aid was involved, that seems to have been an end. How does Trump end the war if he's going to continue to fund this regime, which you and others have told us, you know, it Minister Salisbury, most people don't remember him, but he was the Prime Minister of the British Empire around 1900 when Britain was the preeminent power in the world. And he used to say the most grievous error in politics is clinging tenaciously to the carcass of dead policies. You know, I was hoping that President Trump would realize that the policy in Ukraine is dead.

I would argue that the policy in the Middle East is also dead. But immediately end what's happening in Ukraine. Get out of it. But instead of that, he seems to have decided to extend it, perhaps because he thinks he can extract some goodness from it. After all, he's arguing that in return for rare earths, we would provide more military aid. Well, I don't know who the military aid will go to. I mean, there are 1.2 to 1.5 million dead Ukrainians. They can't replenish the ranks. There are no substitutes.

The state of Ukraine is effectively destroyed. So where is he going to get the people to operate the equipment he gets? I think it's ridiculous but apparently that's uh President Trump's idea that if he could extract rare Earths from them that would be that would be a benefit the problem is the rare Earths are all in the in the areas that are populated with Russians and the Russians currently control them so you're not going to get any rare Earths out of that. Here he is just a couple of minutes ago in the Oval Office talking about what he wants to extract from the earth. In Ukraine, they have very valuable rare earth. We want what we put up

to go in terms of a guarantee. We want a guarantee. We're handing them money hand over fist. We're giving them equipment. European is not keeping up with us. They should equalize. And look, we have an ocean in between. They don't. It's more important for them than it is for us. It's like it's the businessman and we'll keep giving you arms, but this is what we want when the war is over. I guess he doesn't realize what you just said, which is that the treasure trove of this stuff is under Russian control, and they're not going to give it up. There's $7.8 trillion supposedly worth of rare earths. They are all under Russian control in eastern Ukraine, which is Russian. What is it, Colonel? We're saying rare earth. they are all under russian control in eastern ukraine which is russian what is it colonel we're saying rare earth what is it oh that that's everything from graphene to beryllium to lithium any number of different things in fact there's a major uh lithium mine uh also in that area of eastern ukraine there were always coal mines there and and coal mines, in the seams of the coal mines, you get rare earths, by the way.

We've got that here in the United States. It's been a big source of frustration for me that we're not maximizing our focus on that. But having said that, the only thing worth having in western Ukraine, where there are no rare earth deposits as far as I know or anything else uh that is the the black Earth you know the rich agricultural land well here's a an interesting flash Cargill DuPont and Monsanto already have bought up the rights to most of the land in western Ukraine so I don't know how he handles that but this is part of Mr. Zelensky's effort to sustain himself and his regime in power by selling off assets. But the rare earths in particular, forget it, President Trump, you're never going to see them. General Kellogg surprised me the other day when he called for a ceasefire and elections.

Two elections in 2025, parliamentary elections and presidential elections. And of course, this was rejected by President Zelensky. Why would he want to expose himself to the wrath of the public that he has helped to destroy? Is this part of Trump's policy? When we say policy, I think we have to go back to basics and look at the assumptions. There is an assumption in the Trump administration that Ukraine is a viable state. It is not. There is an assumption that the Ukrainian military, with additional aid, can recover and continue to fight. That is untrue. There is an assumption in the Trump administration that they can overcome the corruption that riddles the country by extracting some benefit from rare earths.

That's not going to happen. The 7.8 trillion of those are in the eastern part of Ukraine under the Russians. And there's this other underlying assumption. Russia's bad. Russia's the enemy. President Trump knows better than that. These people are not the enemy of us. They're not the enemy of Western Europe or Eastern Europe. There's no interest in going to war with us. And he should step forward and make that clear. But for some reason, he's decided to stay on point. That's why I said the clinging to this carcass of dead policy is a serious mistake. If he doesn't get out of this and distance himself from the folly and stupidity of his predecessors, it could well drag him into the pit. Here's President Zelensky on Sunday, Colonel, so just two days ago. It almost sounds as though he's claiming that money from the U.S.

has been stolen, not by his people, but by the Americans. Take a listen. Cut number 12. When they say that Ukraine during the war received $200 billion to support the army, et cetera, that's not true. I don't know where all this money is. What was your reaction to the freeze in U.S. foreign aid to organizations that included those in Ukraine? And are you concerned that this might be followed by a potential freeze in military aid? Look, as the president of a warring country, I tell you, we received just over 75 billion dollars.

That is 100 billion of these 177 billion, or 200 billion, some people even say, we have never received. And this is important because we are talking about specific things because we got it not with money but with weapons we got 70 billion something worth of it i don't know can you figure out what he's saying? It's almost as if he's complaining. He, the head of the most corrupt government and the most corrupt society in Europe, complaining that they didn't get all the money that was promised and therefore somebody else did.

I think it's useful to point out that as far as we can tell, he receives, this is the president of Ukraine in the form of Zelensky, $11 million a month. That's his salary. So we can certainly point to waste, fraud, and abuse there. $11 million a month? Yes. That's what the Russian and actually the Ukrainian press, it's out there, $11 million a month. And then on top of that, you know, we could point to his real estate holdings.

They're worth tens of millions. And we don't even know with certainty which banks hold enormous quantities of cash. So I would say that he is probably the chief thief in Ukraine. Now, he would probably argue that he's not, that he's had to pay off oligarchs who backed him. That may be true but the real point is uh we've sent a lot of money over there we know that a lot of it was essentially put into this laundering machine in washington dc that allows us to ship equipment and pay for it right here in washington but the equipment goes to Ukraine, but cash, not so much. But we've still sent enough cash in terms of hundreds of millions from time to time

that he's being able to pay off his government. Everybody in the parliament is richly rewarded for their support. And, of course, the officers in command of Ukrainian troops are earning vast sums of money. It is one giant scam. It makes Bernie Madoff look like a patriot in the United States compared to this man. The mountain of lies is collapsing, Judge. This is the beginning of the end, and all of this is going to come out in a big way. So how does this end? The Russians won't negotiate with him, rightly so. He doesn't have any legal authority to sign an agreement and he's refusing to permit new elections.

Does the U.S. just get rid of him? Well, that depends. I think we could see something that looks a lot like our departure from Kabul, where he and others like him are packing as much cash and belongings as they can into private jets and and and cars and things or railroad cars and leaving as quickly as possible headed west uh you know that that much I think we can say is going to happen it's going to happen soon the the Russians right now have an enormous amount of military power concentrated in a couple of key places. One is across from Kiev, and the other is further south down near Kherson. They can move whenever they decide to move, and there's nothing the Ukrainians can do about it.

We know that. If we continue to prevaricate and lie, as we have thus far, about the true state of affairs on the ground, they will eventually move. And there won't be anybody to sign anything because it won't be necessary. The entire Ukrainian state will have collapsed, and the Ukrainian population that remains is not going to put up a fight at this stage because they've had enough. So you'll end up with the Russians in charge, period. And we will have thrown away any opportunity we might have ever had to help shape some sort of outcome that would have been remotely beneficial to Europe

or the Ukrainians. This will probably take us back to Israel and Gaza, but what is your comfort level, Colonel, with the super-rich, some would call them oligarchs, with which President Trump has surrounded himself. For example, this fellow Howard Lutnick and the other fellow Steve Witkoff, do they have, as far as you know or understand, an economic interest in the outcome of the deals they're negotiating purportedly on behalf of the U.S.? Well, I think we can say with some degree of certainty that they certainly do. I mean, these are people that managed to acquire billions of dollars of wealth. You can debate how that happens. We have to understand that our economy is completely

financialized. Someone said to me the other day, Doug, we don't have an economy at all. We have to understand that our economy is completely financialized. Someone said to me the other day, Doug, we don't have an economy at all. We have a financial system that owns the economy. I think that's a good way to look at it. These gentlemen that you mentioned are part of that development, that structure of power. I'd be surprised if it were not the case. I read something, and then I watched briefly Alex Kreiner, who is a very fine financial analyst. He's somebody that you should consider bringing on to look at this from a political standpoint. But he pointed out that obviously the government in London is going to fall because the British economy is moribund, and the financial system is going to crash and now one of the

symptoms of this has been the the london metals exchange where you know the bank of england is suspiciously may not have the gold in its vaults that it's supposed to have now what gold is there is being extracted by investors in the United States. Apparently, they seem to want to get out before there is a quote- there, to backstop the losses in order to prevent a wholesale collapse of the financial system in London. And it is rumored, and this is where Kreiner comes in, and he knows more about this than I do, but he suggested they're actually talking about using U.S. treasuries in a sense to backstop by essentially putting them up for sale in an exchange in

London. Now, this is something we've never done before. At least I can't find any evidence for it. We've always sold it. I never heard of it. Yeah. So somebody said to me, well, look, you've got a lemonade stand and there's another lemonade stand that's out of lemonade.

So you go over to them and you pour some lemonade into them to keep them going. But the problem is there's nothing behind it. And I think that's where we're headed in England. No matter how hard people try to rig the system, which is really what we're talking about when we talk about putting treasuries into the pool of assets on which the banks depend for solvency and effectiveness, that's pretty much the end. So you're talking about a system that's doomed. The objection to it would be, I suspect, in the United States from investors, well, when that falls apart and the government goes down and the bank collapses, what happened to our assets? They're gone.

In other words, why should we put ourselves at risk? Because then we'll end up in the same position. It's a very fishy set of circumstances. It's something that most of us never look at because, frankly, that's not where we're focused. But this is something that deserves a lot of attention in the financial markets, and it deserves attention from Americans who care about the United States. And we don't know if Donald Trump understands this, if he's dumb like a fox, or if he truly doesn't understand it and is being taken advantage of by the people around him. I think he's someone who's grown up in new york and expects that the

people that surround him will take profits as they can to enrich themselves and probably doesn't see anything wrong in that but more important he may not really understand the fragility of the situation in london you know when trust was removed as prime minister she came in gangbusters with a plan to do everything that margaret had done. It was made very clear to her, we can't raise taxes, we can't cut taxes, we don't have the funds, we don't have anything that you want to do. And so she lasted for a few months and was gone. I think that's where Starmer is right now. Only his position is far worse. He's talking about shipping billions of pounds to ukraine which is absurd since ukraine is a bottomless pit with nobody in it anymore but more important uh they

don't have it to send and when this bank of england goes under there's going to be chaos and that's going to have an impact on the continent it's going to have an impact here in the united states i think we're going to see a ripple effect. So, again, I don't know what the president knows. I want to get back to where we started earlier, and I apologize for asking you a question I've asked you many times before, but events seem to be moving so quickly now. Is the United States still close to a war? I think right now with President Trump in the White House, he is unwilling to commit forces in direct combat against the Russians. And for that matter, the Chinese. I noted recently that the website for Taiwan in the State Department

had suddenly changed radically. And it was a statement on the website that said we reaffirmed the one china policy so i thought that was a dramatic departure from all the nonsense from his predecessors that's something we should greet because i can't conceive of anything dumber and and more dangerous than a war with china which would benefit nobody, least of all us. So I think that's an indication of where President Trump is thinking in Asia. I think he wants to avoid that with Russia. But the real key at this stage of the game

is what he does in the Middle East with Mr. Netanyahu. I would say there are three things that are driving everything. President Putin in Russia, he's clearly in control. He's won the war. He holds the strategic high ground. Then there's Mr. Netanyahu, who for various reasons has control of us, our military power, our strategic interests in the region. And then finally, it's the border and the potential for the border to really explode into all-out war, which I think is coming.

Do you read anything into the fact that the Secretary of State is not part of the meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump? Not really. It may be because that's President Trump's preference. President Trump points out routinely when you ask him, I'm the man who makes all the decisions. Carl McGregor, thank you, my dear friend. I know we're all over the place, but it's a pleasure to be able to pick your brain

and deeply grateful for all of your time. Thank you so much. I hope you can join us again next week. One last comment, just for the record, Judge. Everybody heard it here. There will be a war on the border with Mexico. That's coming. And what we're doing right now are half measures.

And that is going to blow up in our faces because there's a tremendous amount of money at stake for the cartels in Mexico if we truly secure the border. When you say war, you don't mean the U.S. versus Mexico. You mean the U.S. versus the cartels, which Mexico can't control. The cartels have become Mexico. Anyone who pays attention to the president of Mexico is wasting their time. Just like the 10,000 troops that the president of Mexico said they'd put on the border, they're all on the payroll for the cartels as well. They'll do what they're told by the cartels. It is an organized crime state. It's a simple fact. That's going to become a war zone in the future. And we need to be prepared

for that. That should be our focus because that could destroy us as a country. Nothing happening right now in Eastern Europe or the Middle East needs to concern us as much as what's happening in Mexico and on the border and inside our own country, as you saw recently in Los Angeles. Thank you, Colonel. It's gloomy news, but we need to hear it. Thanks for your time, as always. All the best. Thank you, Judge. Sure. And coming up later today, we've had to adjust our schedule due to scheduling conflicts at 3 o'clock this afternoon. Ambassador Charles Freeman at 4 o'clock this afternoon. Professor John Mearsheimer. Thank you for watching. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. We'll be right back. Thank you.